In the U.S., crucial support came from the DEA, FBI, IRS-CI, HSI, USPIS, and the FDA OCI. On the international front, Europol and national police forces across ten countries were vital to the effort. For the first time, FBI agents from all the bureau’s field offices also visited buyers to tell them about the overdose danger of pills sold online, which are often disguised to look like prescription drugs. “Operation RapTor shows that the dark web is not beyond the reach of law enforcement,” said Head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, Edvardas Šileris. “Through close cooperation and intelligence sharing, officers across three continents identified and arrested suspects, sending a clear message to those who think they can hide in the shadows.
Police Shut Down Long-running Dark Web Drug Market
That revenue funded Incognito Market’s operations, including paying “employee” salaries and for computer servers. To facilitate these financial transactions, Incognito Market had its own “bank,” which allowed its users to deposit cryptocurrency on the site into their own accounts. After a narcotics transaction was completed, cryptocurrency from the buyer’s account was transferred to the seller’s account, less the 5% fee that Incognito collected. While China-based vendors are frequently referenced as the source of precursors for dangerous synthetic drugs, their involvement in machinery sales is also an important aspect of the drug supply chain. One China-based pill press manufacturer which advertises on clearnet business-to-business (B2B) websites has on-chain ties to drug vendors on Abacus Market.
‘Cutting Off A Major Supply Line’
The vendor’s listing of a protonitazene analog boldly states that the compound has a potency 20x greater than that of fentanyl, as seen below. Once received by the buyer, the compound could be pressed into counterfeit pills, like M30s, and further distributed to end consumers. They also sell PMK and BMK, which are precursors to MDMA and methamphetamine, respectively.
Des Plaines Man Allegedly Held Delivery Driver Hostage Over Missing Item
Europol, which is based in The Hague, built its intelligence on evidence from Germany, which seized the marketplace’s “criminal infrastructure” in December 2021, the agency said. The United States saw 153 arrests as part of the international operation, followed by the United Kingdom, with 55, and Germany, with 52, according to the European Union law enforcement agency Europol, which coordinated it. Opponents of strict dark web policing sometimes argue that such operations drive criminal activity to even more hidden or encrypted platforms, making detection harder.
Scale And Reach Of Archetyp Market
Incognito Market was available globally to anyone with internet access and could be accessed using the Tor web browser on the dark web. As Pharoah — the leader of Incognito market — Lin supervised all of its operations, including its employees, vendors and customers, and had ultimate decision-making authority over every aspect of the multimillion-dollar operation. The suspected operator of the site — a 30-year-old German national — was arrested at his home in Barcelona. Authorities believe the man, who allegedly used the pseudonym ASNT, ran the platform as part of an organized criminal group trafficking large quantities of narcotics. Investigators seized assets worth approximately €7.8 million (about $9 million), including luxury vehicles and cryptocurrency. International law enforcement agencies have shut down one of the longest-running and most prolific drug marketplaces on the dark web, known as Archetyp Market, and arrested its alleged administrator.
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In the US, the arrests fell under the DOJ’s Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement team, which includes investigators from FBI and the United States Postal Service. J-CODE’s most recent operation, called Sabotor, resulted in 61 arrests announced in March 2019. “These people don’t just operate on one market, they cover the full spectrum of the dark web,” says Europol’s Georges.
Dark Web Drug Trafficking
Nemesis was founded in 2021 and has been growing rapidly since then, according to the BKA. Jerrell Eugene Anderson, who federal authorities allege ran a darknet methamphetamine and cocaine trafficking ring from Santa Clarita, was sentenced to 96 months in federal prison. The cyber-policing breakthrough is the latest win for German police, following their disruption in March of Crimemarket, which was previously described as the country’s largest illegal dark web marketplace. The 29-year-old arrested on Monday is accused of acting as technical administrator of Crimenetwork and has been charged with operating a criminal trading platform and dealing in narcotics.
Last week, one of the dark web’s most prominent drug marketplaces—Archetyp—was shut down in an international, multi-agency law enforcement operation following years of investigations. Europol said Archetyp had been one of the few darknet markets that allowed the sale of fentanyl and other highly potent synthetic opioids. This case was, in part, investigated by HSI New York’s El Dorado Task Force, a money laundering task force comprised of more than 200 law enforcement personnel representing approximately 35 federal, state and local law enforcement and regulatory agencies. The EDTF encompasses a standalone Cyber Division and is on a mission to disrupt, dismantle or render ineffective organizations involved in the laundering of proceeds of narcotics trafficking and other financial crimes. Last week, two men, both in custody, were charged in federal court in Chicago with operating “Empire Market,” a dark web marketplace that enabled users to buy and sell more than $430 million in illegal goods and services around the world. On March 20, 2024, U.S., German, and Lithuanian law enforcement agencies seized Nemesis’ servers in a joint operation.
Partnerships
- Lin was charged with a host of crimes, and by May, federal authorities in New York had arrested him.
- HSI New York leads and directs all operational and administrative activities of the El Dorado Task Force (EDTF).
- The fact that its graphical user interface was built to resemble that of AlphaBay was purposely done to instill a sense of familiarity for users who had become accustomed to AlphaBay.
- Last year, DNM vendors sent a significantly higher portion of their funds to DeFi than they did historically.
- Those charged are Juan Jose Farias Alvarez (“El Abuelo); Alfonso Fernandez Magallon (“Poncho”); Luis Enrique…
Four Los Angeles County men were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of operating one of the dark web’s biggest drug distribution networks, according to the U.S. BKA’s announcement says investigations into Nemesis Market started in October 2022, involving German, Lithuanian, and American agencies, including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). The Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany (BKA) and the Frankfurt cybercrime combating unit (ZIT) conducted the action on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, with law enforcement taking down the website and confiscating approximately $100,000 in cash.
IKlad.biz and Klad.cc, shown in the chart above, are examples of those infrastructure providers. While these outfits are not traditional DNMs, their success highlights how drug vendors are scaling their operations throughout Russian-speaking countries. In spite of Hydra Market’s disruption in 2022, former Hydra affiliates still found operating in today’s DNMs rely heavily on these infrastructure providers. Last December, a Russian court imposed a life sentence on Stanislav Moiseyev, Hydra Market’s suspected founder and operator, although the Moscow prosecutor’s office did not publicly tie the guilty verdict to Hydra.
US Department Of The Treasury
Nemesis Market also saw its demise in March, when German authorities seized its infrastructure, along with $102,000 in cryptocurrency. The operation, which took place between June 11 and 13, also targeted the platform’s moderators, top vendors and technical infrastructure, with coordinated raids conducted across Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and Sweden, according to a statement by Europol. Payments on the platform were made exclusively with Monero, a privacy-enhanced cryptocurrency the architecture of which makes tracing blockchain transactions much more of a pain for authorities. The marketplace had more than 600,000 users with a total transaction volume of at least €250 million ($289 million). Archetyp Market operated for more than five years, numbering more than 600,000 users, and amassing a total transaction volume of more than $280 million. Meanwhile, users of Archetyp began noticing the site’s main domains were down last week, causing some to suspect the site was facing trouble.
At the very least, though, Tuesday’s announcement may give aspiring dark web vendors pause, as it only adds to law enforcement’s track record of cutting through supposedly anonymous corners of the internet. The Wall Street Market seizure is not the first or even most devastating law enforcement takeover of a dark web storefront. In 2017, Dutch police took control of Hansa, a booming darknet market, and the FBI shut down AlphaBay, an even larger competitor. While displaced AlphaBay users flocked to Hansa for their fix, Dutch authorities spent weeks logging their activity, including many of their home addresses.
